In many different fields, the state of the art includes the need to position two or more elements in a reciprocal, pre-set position defining a transit gap, with an extremely high level of precision.
In the metallurgical field, for example, the state of the art covers the need to regulate the position of the shaped rollers of the boxes which guide the rolled stock in order to adapt the gap which they define to the section of rolled stock which has to be guided, or to regulate the position of the shaped working rolls in rolling stands in order to gauge the gap which they define so as to produce rolled stock of the pre-set section, with extremely limited margins of tolerance.
At present, these regulations are done manually by the workers using specific equipment and conventional measuring methods, which are not very precise or reliable.
Measurements made with traditional methods, moreover, must be repeated by the worker several times during the regulation of the rollers or rolls, until the pre-set parameters are achieved.
It is a well-known practice to make the measurements by means of a viewer, which uses an opalized screen and a system of optical amplification to monitor the profile and the dimension of the transit gap defined between two rollers or rolls. However, this system is also manual and does not ensure a reliable result.
At the present time, then, it is extremely complicated to measure and regulate the gap and the alignment between two variable-position elements, in this case rolls and rollers, and it requires a lot of time and specialised staff.
The speed of performance and the results obtained, moreover, are closely connected to the worker, his experience and the technique he uses. FR-A-2.641.373 discloses a distance measuring device to measure the deformations of an object which is rotating at high speed in a vacuum container due to the centrifugal forces acting thereon.
The device comprises a light-emitting element consisting of a stroboscope, whose emission frequency is synchronized to the speed of rotation of the object, a first lens on which the real image of the object obtained with every emission of a stroboscopic impulse is reproduced, a graduated grid on which the real image is superimposed, and a second lens, with an enlarging function, arranged on the other side of the grid with respect to the first lens.
The solution proposed by FR '373 is complex because it requires two distinct lenses, one to represent the rotating object on a scale of 1:1 and one to enlarge the image, and a grid located between the two lenses to visually quantify the deformation of the object.
Moreover, this solution entails an intrinsic difficulty of synchronizing the stroboscopic light and the speed of rotation of the object.
Furthermore, the deformation has to be visually quantified and interpreted on the grid, and is therefore subjective, not very precise, and not very reliable.
This solution therefore does not overcome the problems of the state of the art as explained above.
The present Applicant has designed and embodied this invention to overcome this shortcoming which many people complain of in the state of the art, and particularly in the metallurgical field, and also to obtain further advantages as will be shown hereafter.